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Pizzas bake in a wood-fired oven at JaMaMaSi, a food truck across from Kleber Kaserne in Kaiserslautern, Germany. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Some of these reviews tell the stories of people who have worked long hours to realize a dream.
Others paint a picture of life in this part of Rheinland-Pfalz, a place influenced by an American presence but still quite distinctive in its German character.
A handful compare restaurants to find the best of a particular dish, while plenty of others simply tell you to try the chicken or avoid the fish.
Below you’ll find restaurants over the past 3+ years that we really liked, others that were just fine and a few that made Burger King seem like fine dining. This is by no means everything there is to offer; we’ve skipped some places that most Americans hear about within a few days of arriving. It’s a growing list of what we find new, different or intriguing while living and traveling within an hour of Kaiserslautern.
All of our critics paid for their meals and received no compensation from the restaurants or vendors. If you’re not a subscriber, you will hit a paywall after four stories. Food reviews and gathering news all over the world costs money to do, and we hope you’ll consider spending 99 cents a week (less during holiday promos!) on what we’ve got. Here’s the list:
Babe’s Boba Tea: The craze for one of Taiwan’s trendiest exports took its time getting to the area, but now it’s here in force.
Barbarossahof: Mainstay for Pfalz specialties; less common meats like wild boar and rabbit may be on the menu.
Benji’s Birdhouse: Nashville hot chicken, Korean-style fried chicken sandwiches come in mild, spicy and out-of-your-ever-lovin’-mind levels of heat.
Best pizza in Kaiserslautern: A roundup of pizza in the city, though some in our newsroom would now vote for JaMaMaSi as the top pick.
Blank Roast: This place in Neustadt is for coffee obsessives who talk about beans in group chats. They use a hulking 1930s machine with state-of-the art controls to roast the coffee, and they add local grapevines to the process.
Bruno’s: Good burgers and sandwiches in the midst of the Neustadt wine trails.
Café Bännjerrück: Locals’ breakfast joint reminds critic of the places he ate as a kid in the Detroit suburbs.
Café Hinz: Strong cappuccino and typical German breakfast at K-Town’s outskirts.
Chacarero: A splurge on serious steak. Call ahead to have them start cooking your steak early for the best experience.
Civat: Middle Eastern stews, pita, Kurdish coffee and more in Landstuhl. Casual but classy enough for a date night.
Curry House: A review of Indian food from the point of view of someone who has rarely ever eaten it. Those of us who eat a lot of it think it competes with Raj Mahal for best in K-Town, though dinner time prices have risen in the past year.
Denkmalz: It had me a “15th century chapel brewery.” The salmon burger isn’t bad either. Families headed to the Bad Soberheim barefoot park can check it out.
DieDa im Weingut: Vegan burgers and a focus on the local wines in Bad Dürkheim.
Dürkheim Giant Barrel: You read that right. Eat in a cavernous wine barrel that could otherwise fit 449,092 gallons of wine.
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The outside beer garden patio in the shade of the Dürkheim Giant Barrel in Bad Dürkheim, Germany, June 6, 2022. The outside area offers seating for up to 210 guests during Germany’s mild summer days. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
French fry battle: Scouting out the best fries in K-Town. Unfortunately, Lutra Burger and its high-flying fries are no more.
Get fit roundup: We asked five restaurants in Kaiserslautern for their healthiest dishes. None of these are boring salads.
Glockencafe: One-of-a-kind joint in K-Town since 1981 gets comers from all parts of the community.
Hashimoto: Farther afield than our usual reviews, but this Saarbrücken restaurant is dead-on authentic Japanese sushi and other fine meals. No place quite like this exists in Kaiserslautern or the outlying villages.
Hello Fresh: Our vegetarian food critic gave the German outpost of this meal delivery company a shot during the pandemic. Our omnivores who have weekly orders came to similar conclusions. There’s good and bad, with a reliance on potatoes and yogurt or cream-based sauces. Translation works for the most part through mobile phone browsers.
It’s Me Cafe: Cake, coffee and bacon, though not necessarily in that order.
JaMaMaSi: Some of the best pizza and Italian lunches in the area comes from an unexpected place: a food truck in a recycling center across from Kleber Kaserne. There is passion and creativity coming out of this wood-fired oven.
Joujou: Whimsical gluten-free restaurant in the wine country of Bad Dürkheim.
Juicy: Smoothies, bagels and TikTok opportunities in the K-Town Altstadt (that’s old city for the newcomers).
Julien: A Francophile puts a K-Town French restaurant to the test.
K-Town Cupcakes: Four decades ago, Claudia Ramsey’s father, a former U.S. Army captain, gave her an American flag, which today hangs behind the till at her bakery.
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About a dozen different flavors of cupcakes are sold at K-Town Cupcakes on any given day. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)
Kiko: Vietnamese-German sushi is its own genre. This restaurant in the overlooked Pre-Park area of Kaiserslautern is busy for the right reasons.
Kunst Cafe Vogelwoog: A beer garden on a lake nestled in the forest, with live music. Everything about that is good.
Markers Kleines: A solo diner fresh off the plane from Ohio gets turned down for a table in a such a delightful way that he returns to this relatively upscale German restaurant in Weilerbach.
Masons: A fun concept with a distinctly German view of global cuisine.
9chan: A Thai restaurant in Landstuhl that will bring the fire, if you ask for it.
9 to 5 Cafe; Good vibe, vegetarian-friendly breakfast and lunch fare. Some creative options for the meat eaters.
Ölmühle: Our gluten-free critic’s scorecard on this hotel and restaurant in Landstuhl.
Orangerie: An American’s first encounter with a daring Pfalz specialty in Kirchheimbolanden.
Peters Alm: This Homburg beer garden is more about the lake view and the ambiance than the dining.
Pho Viet: The owner of this restaurant got tired of serving Chinese food and went back to his roots. That’s a good thing. Besides what is listed, the hotpot is a fine option for a leisurely dinner with a group.
Raj Mahal: We’d say this is Curry House’s main competition in downtown Kaiserslautern.
Ramen roundup: We had to make an exception here. There is acceptable ramen in the Kaiserslautern Military Community, but the ramen in Frankfurt is a cut above. If you’ve ever been stationed or lived in Japan, make the trip.
Restaurant MAX: Our critic’s father, a retired Air Force NCO, steered him to Winnweiler for steak.
Seewooghutte: Bites and drinks by the lake. Everyone in Ramstein village ends up here eventually.
The Parlour: A former Landstuhl barber shop stays in the family, turns into a chic breakfast and lunch stop.
Termeh: Smoky eggplant, long-grain rice with saffron, Persian kebabs. This Einsiedlerhof restaurant is a winner. The COVID-era delivery is probably over for good, but they still offer takeout.
Thai Corner: Do you have a friend who prefers not to criticize? Well, we made that person a critic and her food wasn’t very good. The truth shall set us free.
Tida: Can a new restaurant’s offerings compare to a critic’s memories of Thai food from his youth?
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The vegetable panang curry at Tida. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)
Vaishnavi: A neuroscientist in Homburg dearly missed the Indian food she knew and loved back home, so she opened her own restaurant. It may be the only place in the area that serves south Indian dosa.
Vending machine roundup: Meat, milk, eggs, wine, toys and so many other things are for sale in vending machines in villages and on farms.
Viet Phap: The words “sushi burrito” either have you running toward Viet Phap or away from it quickly.
Wurst-Küch: Old-school Pfalz restaurant and pub translating to “sausage kitchen.” Nostalgic and affordable.
Yedo: Westernized sushi in Homburg that does the job, plus some pan-Asian treats like Thai soups and Korean noodles.
Zur Pfaffschenke: German family-style restaurant with a history of serving workers from the now-shuttered Pfaff sewing machine factory. Steaks, schnitzel and vegan entrees are featured on the menu.
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The Pfälzer Teller at the Wurst-Küch is a plate of specialties from the Pfalz region. It consists of stuffed pork stomach, a liver dumpling and a bratwurst served with sauerkraut and bread. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)